Michael C. Night Assignments


Assignment 1: Reasons for Writing

Allen Michael Capo

English8P-7
January 26, 2010
Elie Wiesel

There are many reasons why Elie Wiesel wrote Night. First, was because he needed to give some meaning to his survival. He did not want the enemy to have one last victory by erasing the memories of the holocaust from peoples' minds. A second reason for Wiesel to write the book was because he was convinced that his past would be judged one day so, he needed to bear witness to it. He also thought that since he lived through the horrible experience, he could not hold his tongue about his story. Another important reason is that Wiesel did not want his past to become our future. Francois Mauriac told the reader in the forward that Wiesel wrote the book because he questions his faith. Since Wiesel was a Jew, he believed that he was of the chosen race. Then, the holocaust happened and Wiesel asked himself if there was a God. He questions why God let the chosen ones suffer.




Assignment 2: Holocaust Web Search


Night Web Search
Background Information for the Holocaust
Use the following websites for a quick overview of the following terms and people.
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/

Topics to Know
Questions
Answers
Nazi Propaganda


Who is Joseph Goebbels?

List three things the Nazis did to ensure
that their views were shown/heard in the most persuasive manner possible.

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/propaganda_in_nazi_germany.htm

Joseph Goebbels was appointed by Hitler to become the head of Propaganda for the Nazi’s.

  1. He set up the Reich Chamber of Commerce in 1933.
  2. He issued a system of censorship so, people could only hear, read and write what the Nazi’s wanted them to.
  3. He set up the first of the infamous book burning episodes.


Kristallnacht/ The Final Solution/
Wannsee Conference
What is Kristallnacht and what does the word mean? When did it happen?
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/kristallnacht/

Who attended and what was decided at the Wannsee Conference?

What was the Final Solution?

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005477

Krastallnacht took place on the nights of November 9-10 in 1938. The word is translated into English meaning “The Night of Broken Glass.” It refers to when rioters broke windows of synagogues, Jewish community centers, and Jewish homes.

The Wannsee Conference was held on January 20, 1932 in a villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee. The people that attended were 15 high ranking Nazi and German officials. They met to decide the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.”

The final solution was the codename for the physical annihilation of all European Jews.

The Victims
Besides the Jewish people, list seven other groups were also targets/victims of the Holocaust?

Briefly tell the fate of each group under Nazi rule.

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007457

CLUE: Begin reading at “Targeted Groups”


Other groups besides Jewish people that were targeted by the Nazi’s were gypsies, people with disabilities, Poles, Soviet POW”s, Afro- Germans, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals.

All of these groups were targeted to be sent to concentration and death camps to be killed because they were of an “inferior” race.


The Ghettos
Describe the three types of ghettos, their purpose, and locations.

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005059

What was life like in the ghettos?
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007445

The three types of ghettos were open, closed, and destruction ghettos. The open ghetto had no walls or fences but, there were restrictions on entering and leaving. They were usually located in German-occupied Poland and the occupied Soviet Union, as well as in Transnistria, that province of Ukraine occupied and administrated by Romanian authorities. A closed ghetto was closed off by walls, or by fences with barbed wire. They were situated primarily in German-occupied Poland and the occupied Soviet Union. The purpose of this ghetto was to starve the Jews. The destruction ghetto was tightly sealed off and existed for between two and six weeks. The Germans decided to shoot everyone inside of these ghettos. They were located in German occupied Soviet Union as well as Hungary.





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The Camps
There were two kinds of camps: labor camps and death/extermination camps. What is the difference between the two?
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005144

What were the conditions?

What different types of extermination were performed?

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005145

The difference between labor camps and death/extermination camps was in labor camps prisoners were forced into labor and died of exaughtion.
In the death camps, prisoners were almost certainly going to be killed.

The conditions of these camps were horrible for the prisoners. The different types of exterminations used were
asphyxiation with poison gas or by shooting.



The Liberation & The Nuremberg Trials
Who liberated the camps?
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005131

What did Hitler do near the end of the war?

How many defendants were charged during the Nuremberg Trials? What did they represent?
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007143

What did the International Military Tribunal decide was not a legitimate defense?
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007142


The people who liberated the camps were the Allies.

Hitler, along with 2 other Nazi leaders, committed suicide.

There were 24 people charged during the Nuremburg Trials. They represented German diplomatic, economic, political, and military leadership.


The IMT decided that “following orders” was not a legitimate defense.




Assignment 3:Images of Night


Ghettos

Ghettos
Small and Large
Confined, cramped, contained
As deadly as a snake and like a home from hell
An enclosed place of death
Enslaved
Near the streets of your neighborhood